


l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle

by freloux



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Sex, Cuddling, Edgeplay, F/M, Masturbation, Romance, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-08 22:44:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6877534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freloux/pseuds/freloux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara takes an interest in the matter of the Doctor's virginity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle

**Author's Note:**

> "We have borrowed these clothes,  
> these time-and-space personalities,  
> from a light, and when we praise,  
> we are pouring them back in."  
> -Rumi
> 
> [RandomThunk has drawn fanart of this story.](http://randomthunk.tumblr.com/post/145694386781/but-if-space-travel-is-continuous-freefall-then) <3

It's halfway through the mating ritual that it all starts to make sense. The aliens are very polite. Welcoming, even. They describe how this happens every year at the full moon and how they would be _honoured_ if Clara and the Doctor would join them.

And the Doctor says thanks, no, we're fine - I'm fine - so sorry, wrong turn, must dash. So off they go again, this time exploring the TARDIS instead of the planet that turned out to be more of a nudist colony slash orgy.

She's flopped on an armchair and he's a few feet away at the table. Glasses on, shirtsleeves rolled up. Under the pale of his skin she can see a faint pattern of blue lines. A map to his hearts that eventually disappears under lavender fabric. The rest of his shirt all buttoned up, keeping him contained and locked away.

Two and two together. His discomfort with things like that. The way he's always come off as above and somehow separate from the basic operations of the human body.

Clara confronts him about it, couching it in politer terms even though she's burning with curiosity. And perhaps other things as well.

"So you have done, just not with anyone - "

An almost imperceptible shake of the head.

"You've never done. Never had." Clara's incredulous. "It's not as if you've not had the opportunity."

She can feel his mental shying away, matching the physical. An explanation. "I'm not human, Clara. I don't need it the way you do."

Something in his look is uncomfortably dissecting. "Which is to say, at all," she replies. Deflecting.

***

In her room, in her bed. Living here, in his ship - and the way he said that, like he _knew_ \- makes it seem like he's right there with her. She can only imagine (wants to imagine) what it must be like for him. Exercising that curiosity of his on himself then stopping short. She wonders if he's curious about her, too.

Damp sheets twisted up around her legs. Moaning into her pillow. When she comes, it feels like the ship itself is folding in around her.

***

Adventuring is fun but it's the nifty disguises that have become one of her favourite parts. The dressing up. This time round the Doctor has got on a blue plaid suit that, on anyone else, would look horrendous. She's wearing a cute little miniskirt and a blouse which, to be fair, isn't too far off from her usual wardrobe.

They're walking through a rather posh neighbourhood, on their way to deliver a package to a friend of the Doctor's. It may or may not involve nuclear codes. "As interested as I am in stuff blowing up," he says, "sometimes I do like to avert it. You know, keep you lot around for entertainment."

"I'm flattered," Clara returns. She hopes the sarcasm lands right. With him it can be a grab bag of reactions.

The two of them pass endless anonymous blocks of flats. Minis in white and green parked out front. Two mods zipping down the street on a customised scooter. White, blank streets. The only noise is the _shuffle shuffle_ of his shoes, punctuated by the _click click_ of her heels. A warm, tingly feeling as she feels the Doctor next to her. Noticing the way he fills up space. For someone so skinny, there's a lot of him.

"Wait here." They reach a tall building that stands out from the rest. Ornate metalwork, gargoyles supporting a balcony. The Doctor disappears inside and before Clara can sneak in after him, he shuts the door with a snap.

Time ticks on. She's waiting. Always waiting. She's about to spring up the steps and demand an explanation when the Doctor bursts back out, breathing hard.

"That didn't go quite as planned," he half-explains. "Different person, other side, might have to do another time loop to prevent major catastrophe."

"I'll have to clear my schedule, then," Clara returns. Success: his lips quirk up in a smile.

***

She's been in stable time loops before and this one, at first, isn't much different. The same two mods on their scooter, zooming past. The pattern of the cars in front of all those blocks of flats. That tingly rush - she can pinpoint exactly when it happens now. It's when they round the corner and she almost bumps into him. Her body against his, if only briefly. Grasping at his lapels for balance. Rough, tweedy fabric under her fingers. A sharp, slightly musky scent that she could inhale forever.

Thankfully she can just pass it off as part of the loop. Or could, until they're three rounds in and still haven't found the right bloke. The Doctor, clutching the package to his chest for support. "Are you doing that on purpose?"

"What if I am?" she returns.

He makes a face like he's trying to download that information. Even after they finally deliver the nuclear codes and avert certain planetary doom, he's quiet as they return to the TARDIS. Processing. On the other side of the console. Gripping levers. Pushing buttons. Silence stretches out. She's gotten used to the silences, can name them all by type: angry, sad, perplexed-by-humans, annoyed-by-humans. This one feels new. Clara can almost feel the straining force of his mind. Gears turning, just like those at her fingertips.

"It turns you on, doesn't it," he finally says.

Clara leans against the console, gooseflesh rising up along her skin. "What does."

"My, ah, situation." He's not looking at her. Still driving.

"Yes, I suppose it does," Clara admits. She feels so settled in her body at the moment, every awkward placement magnified.

"Why?"

Inhale, exhale. Buying herself time. "That there's been no one - " Stop, no that's not quite right. Restart. "It makes me feel special - " That's even worse. "That is, that I could - " she finishes lamely as he rounds the console.

The Doctor, crowding in. A cold metal lever digs itself into her lower back. His silky trouser-clad thigh between her legs, rucking up-up-up, his voice rich and honey-dark. "So you've thought about it." Heat floods her. Face warm, body warm. "In your room, hoping I wouldn't hear, that I wouldn't know..." His hand at her waist, fiddling idly with the tiny zipper of her skirt. She's dizzy. Her legs won't support her weight on their own. "But I do know." And he does, Clara knows he does. He's figured it out. It's not just that he's psychic, he probably has heard her. Can probably smell it now as he's standing in front of her, oh god, the way it's soaking into her knickers - can feel it, his touch so light and teasing against the fabric that it's nearly painful.

Breathing hard, wantingwantingwanting _greedy_. He's pulling at her tights, her knickers. Her fingers gripping tight at the console: _where are you going to take me_. Skirt slid off, the rest of it bunched down around her thighs, the waistband of the tights firm against her skin as she cants her hips forward. And that's when she says it aloud, _ohgodohgodohgod_ , little helpless bleats as he curls his fingers inside her. Voice softer now, a caressing whisper. "Touching yourself, something like this." Beckoning her towards oblivion before cutting it off. Her mouth open, gasping breaths when he withdraws his fingers, sticky, _glistening_ -

Almost thoughtful. "Yes, just like that."

***

A still and snowy field on the way to another planet where no humanoid aliens live. Maybe that would be better for him, Clara thinks. No pudding brains or even creatures that are pudding brain-adjacent. The Doctor is so proudly contained within himself. Pulling at the cuffs of his sleeves until they meet his wrists. "Come on, Clara, we're going to be late."

She's dawdling on purpose. It's nice, isn't it, to have just a moment alone together, especially on a more peaceful exoplanet. And there are stars here, winking overhead in a somewhat suggestive way. "I'm sure that your friends on Alpha Centauri A or B or C or whatever it was will understand." An idea, taking shape along with the snowball she's forming in her hands.

He's still off thinking of something else. How withdrawn he is - it often ends up including her, too, making the tone of their interactions get garbled up. No wonder he needs flashcards all the time. Standing there in the middle of a blank field that hasn't been touched for who knows how many thousands of years.

Fed up, Clara knocks him out of it. The snowball lands squarely at the small of his back and he spins around, dusting up snow with the edge of his coat. "What was that?" he asks as if wishing there were flashcards for this, too.

Clara shows him how to shape the snow, how to aim, and scampers away before he can hit her. "See? Isn't it fun to have a shared human experience?" she calls from across the field.

She hopes he understands that she's not entirely talking about snowball fights.

***

Back on board, scrubbed clean. A bit tired. Keeping up with the star children of Alpha Centauri can take a lot out of a person. Sitting in one of the TARDIS's many rooms, doing a puzzle together. Or rather, she's doing the puzzle - he abandoned it out of boredom and is now working on a little planetary model instead, squinting at the parts through rather obnoxiously hipster glasses. Something arcs between them that Clara might later describe as tender. It's a quiet evening. The rustling of puzzle pieces, the occasional clink and mild oath as the Doctor fiddles with the model.

A pause. She feels a kind of electric charge vibrating through the air and looks up from the puzzle to find him studying her, like she's some ingenious mechanism that he's just discovered and he wants to find out how she works, too. "Touch yourself for me." Conversational. He could be talking about the weather. _I hear on Venus it's always raining._ "Show me how badly you need it." His voice is so soft and tempting.

Clara's insides are all jumpy. She doesn't know where this is going, all she knows is that she wants to follow him wherever he's taking her. Into the slipstream where time moves for them alone. Wet already, sticky between her thighs. The Doctor working on his model, affixing tiny nobs to their proper slots.

Her nightgown off. Naked now. Wetslick and moaning and that's what he's heard, how he knows: knows how she likes to be touched, what she wants. Cupping her breasts, squeezing her nipples, offering herself up to him if only he'll take it.

"You're rough with yourself," he observes, holding up a miniature brush and stroking it carefully over the spheres of the model. Lifting it to his mouth, blowing carefully to set the colour.

"That's because - I picture - " Incoherent, her nerves all raw.

He stops painting and looks at her. "You want me to be rough with you." Behind the glasses, his eyes are an icy river into which Clara is falling, falling, falling. Legs open now, revealing her fingers working slippery over her clit - "So what if I asked you to stop?"

She gasps, jerking up off the chair. Her hand ends up hitting the table roughly, scattering the final puzzle pieces so that they spin onto the floor and are lost to sight.

***

Hand between her legs, pressing up and in. Hips writhing. So he knows. Let him know, let him hear. Let him feel it, let it resonate in the core of the ship. She's calling out to him. _I want you. I need you._ But mostly _I miss you._ It is this thought that compels her to go and find him.

His room could be just down the hall from hers, or it could be farther away. She's never been there before but she walks with purpose, somehow knowing that she'll get there. Led right to it, the path laid out. Maybe the TARDIS has something to do with it.

It feels strange, stepping into his intimate space. The Doctor is lying on his bed, wearing pyjamas, long legs crossed over each other. He seems softer - more accessible - this way. The only sound as Clara lies down next to him is the gentle tap, tap of his hands against the plastic of that little planetary model. His chest rising and falling, lungs expanding and contracting. The ship expanding to fit her, the Doctor remaining closed off.

Side by side. Still so much space between them. It makes her heart hurt, what he will and won't give. Clara lets her hand drift over to his hip. She's waiting. Always waiting.

Beyond his hip now to rest her hand on his cock, feeling the heat of it through his pyjamas. The tapping stops and he rests the model on his bedside table, on top of an old copy of _The Observer_ and a signed pressing of the _White Album_. Clara keeps her hand there, rubbing only a little, the skin firmer now. He whines, a tiny sound at the back of his throat. "Tell me how you want me to touch you," Clara says. And he does: she feels a mental intrusion, a hesitant tug at the back of her mind.

Throbbing fingertips. Pushing pyjama bottoms and pants down, down, down. Freeing him. His breath laboured at her ear. The warm weight of his cock in her hand as she strokes him. "Do you like that?" she asks, feeling her way upwards to the tip where he's wet and oversensitive. His forehead is all screwed up, concentrating. She can't help wondering if he'd look like that if/when they'd ever be together. Open mouth dark red. The tip of his cock dark red. Precome poured out over her hand. He's lifting his hips, desperate -

"Two thousand years," she continues, quiet and marveling while she gives him a slow, reassuring jack. His breath rattles shaky and rough in his chest. "All that time spent never knowing how this feels - how it could feel." Her little hand, gripping him tight.

Clara continues to squeeze her way up and down his cock and he chokes out a gasp. "It feels - it feels, it's too much - " With great difficulty, he takes her hand away. "This can't happen the way you want it to." _I'm not your boyfriend_ all over again.

"What way can it happen?" she asks, small and sad as the void stretches out between them once more. She's gotten used to the silences, can name them all by type. This particular silence is interrupted only by the slight sigh of the ship adjusting while they're carried on into deeper space. But when she crosses that void to kiss him, she meets no resistance.

They kiss and kiss and kiss. Close-mouthed and safe at first until Clara slips her tongue into his mouth, trying to communicate her needs. Every cell in her body overcome with longing, even as she feels his erection, damp on her nightgown. A thing between them that cannot be.

***

The Doctor's got the most extensive music collection of anyone she's ever met. He keeps it in a room that looks like a cross between a study and some shoddy record store. Every time they're in there together, it sounds like there's rain pouring on the roof, though Clara knows this isn't the case. The room just must be engineered that way.

She drifts her way through rows of music and comes across an unmarked paper sleeve. "What's this one?" she asks, holding it up for him to see.

"Mm?" He's busy rifling through a different shelf, lost in another musical era. "Oh, that old thing. Belongs to NASA, I nicked it off the Voyager 1. Here."

The Doctor takes the sleeve carefully out of her hands and slides it off to reveal a burnished gold record. "Let's give it a listen, shall we?" Setting it gently on the record player, stroking the arm of the stylus, pressing it down on the grooves. Clara holds her breath. Jealous of a record player, that's a new one.

She gets tired of standing awkwardly there, arms folded while she listens. So she spreads out on the nearby rug to let the sounds wash over her. The children of Earth sending hopeful greetings to the universe. Earthquakes. Human laughter. Chuck Berry. As the dulcet strains of "Johnny B. Goode" fade away, the Doctor joins her, albeit on the other side of the rug.

Towards the end of the record is a sort of odd crackle-snap noise. Brainwaves, evidently. Clara asks what they're thinking about. "The history of ideas, mostly." Cautious. "And now?" He swallows. "What it's like to fall in love."

They lie there on the rug, the Doctor's hands laced together on his chest.

"And what are _you_ thinking about, Doctor?" He doesn't answer. She cuddles closer, drawing a pattern on his chest with her pointer finger. The imprint of his body against hers. "Why is it that you don't want to - can't -"

He sighs. "I'm not human, Clara."

"You've said," Clara replies, frustrated at how he's so confident in his systems. His belief that everything can be reduced to a model, like that stupid planetary model that even now is staring at them from a nearby shelf.

"No, it's not that." He pauses and there's yet another new silence, one that threatens to break and turn serious. "I don't want to hurt you, Clara. I could never hurt you."

"I don't care." _I want you to be rough with me._

They're just two spacecraft that started out on the same course but are now getting further and further apart. She glances over at the Doctor, but he doesn't meet her eyes. Instead he's staring up at the ceiling like it's incredibly fascinating. Clara looks up too, briefly, just in case. No, just endless white.

"What I mean is - I don't want you to be disappointed. If. If it's not the way you want. The way you're expecting."

Clara makes a little exasperated sound and snuggles up to him. "If you haven't figured it out by now, Doctor, there is very little that would prevent me from wanting to have sex with you."

No reply, but she notices that he's got that little quirk of a smile again.

***

He takes her to what is, in fact, a space restaurant. It's at the centre of a young star that was just discovered near the corner of a jellyfish galaxy. Trendy place, carved into the side of a cliff so they can watch the surf below.

"So I suppose that this would be space champagne, then?" Clara says after their waiter has poured them two flutes of bubbly turquoise liquid.

The Doctor rolls his eyes but clinks his flute with hers anyway.

Silence. She's gotten used to the silences, can name them all by type: angry, sad, perplexed-by-humans, annoyed-by-humans. And now the other type that seems more familiar now: the trying-to-understand-Clara silence. A silence that has become warmer and gentler over time. "Why are we here?" she asks gently, almost afraid to break it.

"Sometimes it's just nice to do something nice," he replies, evasive.

True, but it's also strange, is what this is. To be in a place with him and have no ulterior motive, no end goal, nowhere to run. The conversation starts out awkward. Their usual dynamic, where everything he says to her is just a reaction to what she's said without being the truth.

But if space travel is continuous freefall, then you're going to need someone to hold onto eventually. And at the end of the evening, he doesn't pull away when Clara gives him a hug. "We've got to get you a hug instruction manual," she murmurs against his chest. "See? Open your arms, wrap them around the other person, squeeze."

Neither of them mention it when he squeezes her a little too tight.

***

What exists on each star, each planet, is out there for them to either fight or claim. And then sometimes, like now, it's a matter of taking the scenic route.

They arrive on the outskirts of a pine forest. Rich freshness, clean and sweet. Twigs snapping under their shoes. He's wearing his sonic sunglasses, showing him a path that she can't see. Dark green slightly misty quiet that eventually unfolds into a clearing. Birds chirping off in the distance. Sunlight streaming in through the trees. First the restaurant, now this. What's going on? The Doctor spreads out his coat in the middle of the clearing and she sits next to him. The tips of her Oxfords, the tips of his Docs, almost touching. He wriggles himself closer and kisses the top of her head, the shell of her ear, her cheek, her lips. Pouring himself into the kiss, needy, until Clara pulls away.

"I thought you said it can't happen," she says, confused.

"Clara, it's been happening." Offering himself to her, if only she'll take it. "I thought I didn't need, but I do need - " and he's babbling now, nervous chatter that continues even as Clara kisses him back. Kiss by kiss by kiss. Nudging down the fly of his jeans, pulling off his pants. His hands, grabbing at her shirt. Muttering annoyed things into her hair while he tries to unhook her bra until, like the puzzle, he abandons the project and lets her do it instead.

"You like kissing," he says quietly against her mouth.

Clara smirks at him. She takes off his sonic sunglasses and sets them nearby so they don't get crushed.

He isn't rough with her, not at all. His breathing is all warm and unsteady, something she feels in her stomach and lower still. Relaxing into the feeling. The musky smell is still there, but underneath that is another layer that she didn't notice before. Something clear, blank. New. They're past doing into being. She presses her breasts against his arm, kissing his neck as she leans in to hold onto him. Heat spreading up from his skin and the thick outline of his veins. He's got that face again: face all screwed up, explaining, disappointed, "Clara, I'm going to - "

"No, wait." She holds onto his shoulders and slides down onto him. "Shh. We'll take it slow, then. All right?"

Setting the pace. Figuring out what he likes. One of her hands holding his head as they continue to kiss, fingers nestled in his hair. The other hand rubbing his lower back, his muscles tensing and then easing up as he gets used to her touch. He holds her so tight it's like he's taken that hug manual to the extreme, only relaxing once he understands that she's not going anywhere, that she won't float off into space if he stops touching her.

The thing is, he doesn't seem to want to stop. Which is when something shifts. He's outside of himself, a different form all made up of light and energy, and she's walking with him. So this is what he was afraid of showing her. Standing at one end of the galaxy and saying _I want you, I need you, I miss you_ all over again. And this rush of joy rising up inside her when he answers at last. What's been built up inside her for so long finally allowed to run its course

It carries them back to themselves, where Clara finds that she's still on top and he's still inside her. "You're beautiful," she breathes, because it's true. He smiles back at her. His thighs are trembling underneath her, right on the fulcrum of desire, and she rides it out with him. Everything he's been waiting to give and that she's been waiting to receive.


End file.
